Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 14, 2001

Photo: Gina Gayle

Image 1of/3

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 3

Arthur Delbianco, Marlene Cruz and Hursley Lever, all employed by ABM Engineering, are reunited at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The three were in tower 1 (?) when it collapsed and didn't know if the others had made it out. Wednesday, September 13, 2001. Photos by Gina Gayle/San Francisco Chronicle. less

Arthur Delbianco, Marlene Cruz and Hursley Lever, all employed by ABM Engineering, are reunited at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The three were in tower 1 (?) when it collapsed and didn't know if the others ... more

Photo: Gina Gayle

Image 2 of 3

Police Officer Josepo Polidoro gets a breath of fresh air outside of St. Vincents Hospital in Manhattan. Officer Polidoro was with one of the first groups into the buildings. He is with his fiancee Sue Jannace and his mother MaryAnne, both who wear gold charms around their necks with his badge number on it. Wednesday, September 13, 2001. Photos by Gina Gayle/San Francisco Chronicle. less

Police Officer Josepo Polidoro gets a breath of fresh air outside of St. Vincents Hospital in Manhattan. Officer Polidoro was with one of the first groups into the buildings. He is with his fiancee Sue Jannace ... more

Photo: Gina Gayle

Image 3 of 3

THREE OF TWELVE PICTURES--A firefighter runs up the stairwell as office occupants evacuate Tower One Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 during the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York. These pictures were shot by John Labriola who had an office on the 71st floor of the building. He escaped with no injuries. (AP Photo/John Labriola) less

THREE OF TWELVE PICTURES--A firefighter runs up the stairwell as office occupants evacuate Tower One Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 during the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York. These pictures were ... more

2001-09-14 04:00:00 PDT New York -- Arthur Delbianco raced top to bottom through the World Trade Center, helping people out of the chaos before leading his own rescuers from the building's depths.

Delbianco's story was one of many harrowing accounts of Tuesday's terrorist attack that emerged yesterday as the survivors spoke from their hospitals. Their stories painted vivid pictures of the horror they endured and the heroism they witnessed.

Delbianco was riding an elevator to the top of the North Tower when there was a sudden, sickening jolt. The lights flickered. Darkness fell.

The building engineer was shooting to the roof of the 110-story skyscraper to make a repair when a jetliner plowed into the tower somewhere above him.

He had no idea what happened, but he knew the building like the back of his hand and knew people needed help getting out. He and the elevator operator opened the doors and went to work.

"Let's get some of these people out of here and get them down," he told the man.

They herded people into the cramped elevator and rode down to the lobby. But that wasn't enough for Delbianco. He had to find his co-workers in the basement and make sure they got out, too. As people poured out of the building,

he descended into its bowels.

It was dark. Fire sprinklers sprayed ice-cold water. Ceiling tiles collapsed. Somehow, Delbianco found his friends, carpenter Marlene Cruz and mechanic Hursley Lever. They were running through the chaos when something exploded.

"The blast came from behind us and just pushed us down," Delbianco said. "We just slid like 25 or 50 feet."

Delbianco's cool demeanor gave way to abject terror as his shoulder separated and his knee shattered.

"I just started screaming at the top of my lungs," he recalled trying, and failing, to choke back tears. "The noise was so loud. I kept saying, 'Oh, my God, this is it. This is the day that I'm going to die.' "

Then, salvation. A firefighter stepped on him in the dark. Delbianco reached up and grabbed his belt.

"I just thought, 'Hang on to him.' "

The firefighter hoisted Delbianco to his feet. But he had no idea how to get out of the dark labyrinth. Delbianco had to lead the way. Together, they limped to safety.

No matter how fast he ran, Joseph Polidoro couldn't outrun the debris raining down on Lower Manhattan.

He was among the first New York City police officers to swarm outside the South Tower when the jet slammed into it, just 18 minutes after the attack on the North Tower.

Polidoro guided seven or eight people from the building to safety. He kicked in the doors of nearby businesses, so people could take shelter. He carried one woman two blocks to safety. Again and again, he returned to the madness.

Then the unimaginable happened. The South Tower collapsed, crashing down with a deafening roar. The force of millions of tons of steel and concrete falling in on itself knocked him backward. He got up and ran.

"I kept running and the debris kept coming," he said. "It was such mayhem. People were just trampling each other. I really felt I wasn't going to make it. "

He thought of his fiancee, Sue Jannace, as he dove under a van for cover. He grabbed his cell phone and frantically punched in her number.

Jannace heard the terror in his voice.

"He said, 'Sue, I just wanted to call you to tell you I love you and I'll probably never see you again. I'm probably going to die,' " she said.

An aide to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani grabbed Polidoro and pulled him out and led him to safety.

The 53-year-old paramedic was outside the World Trade Center, frantically erecting a triage center amid the debris littering the street. A plane had just hit the second tower, and casualties were coming fast. It was his job to examine them and pin the green, yellow and red tags on them to denote the severity of their injuries.

He was moving fast, working hard, focused solely on the task at hand.

He didn't see the South Tower buckle, then collapse. The force blew him off his feet. He saw panic -- and a cloud of dust.

"To see people with my own eyes, . . . to hear their voices and then all of a sudden a black cloud, . . ." he remembered yesterday, his voice trailing off.

A volunteer -- whose name, Armstead later learned, was Willie Thompson, who lives in New Jersey -- yanked him to safety. Armstead emerged relatively unscathed, with little more than minor hand injuries and chest pains.

The other New York City Fire Department paramedics in Armstead's company weren't as lucky. No one could save them.

"Everyone who was there with me was lost," he said. "My life is changed totally. There's people who were there with me Tuesday who are not with me today. I miss them."

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.